Elliot Forsman & Rivka Goldstein

Created by Gary Raymond Coffin

When we first meet him in Ogrodnik (2016), the first in the series, long-time Montreal criminology professor (he teaches a course in “Logical Deduction” at the university) and part-time private eye ELLIOT FORSMAN is at loose ends, growing older and going nowhere. He’s living on plastic cheese, packaged salami of dubious vintage and Bud Light, watching his tropical fish swim back and forth in their aquarium, estranged from his college-age son and mourning the loss of his father, murdered a month earlier, and of his wife, Sarah, three years previous.

Realizing the police investigation of his father’s murder isn’t exactly a top priority to them — they’ve more or less have written it off as a simple mugging gone wrong — the bookish Elliot decides it’s time to look into it himself. He brings the full forces of JFK Investigations, his detective agency, to bear — those full forces being an office over Sammy’s Diner on Sherbrooke near Marlowe, and RIVKA GOLDSTEIN, a former Montreal cop who’s now his associate, 5’10” of Israeli muscle.

But it’s not long before they realize that not only was his dad’s death more than a “simple” mugging — they’re up against a conspiracy that involves crooked cops, the pharmaceutical industry, organized crime, assorted hired thugs and a serial killer with a special interest in Rivka.

Montreal? A private eye? Count me in.

Since then, Elliot’s returned in two more adventures, City of Saints (2017) and Passage into Darkness (2019), and another, Left for Dead, is promised for late 2020/early 2021. Oh, and now the series is billed as the “Elliot and Rivka Mysteries”.